Saturday, July 11, 2009

The "Economy" Must Die

The Aztecs engaged in the practice of sacrificing humans to the Sun god. Most people today would consider this barbaric, but the Aztecs had nothing on us. At least the Sun is real, and necessary to all life on this planet. We practice human sacrifice also. The "god" to which we offer up our victims is called the "economy". In contrast to the Sun god, the "economy" is an invented abstraction. When it comes to scale of carnage the Aztecs again, lag far behind. Consider the thousands who starve to death daily for want of little pieces of paper and metal, worth nothing but what we believe they are worth. And let's not forget all the other sacrificial victims who have perished in banker-engineered wars. How could the "economy" have survived without them? Then there are those who for various reasons, are not economically productive. They are kicked to the gutter, considered human garbage. We treat murderers better than that. I guarantee you that, if and when, some future civilisation unearths the debris of our own, they will conclude that the "economy" was our god. How embarrassing. How shameful!
If you look up the word "economy" in the dictionary, it simply means "management of resources". In this sense there is nothing wrong with it. In practice, and as commonly used, it means something else: the monetary economy. Henceforth, when I use the word, it will be in this modern, perverted sense.
Every time I hear the mainstream media, or anybody else, talk about saving the economy, I feel like I'm going to hurl. Why should we want to save it? It's sick. What has it done for us, that we should want to save it? It has turned us into slaves and whores. It has robbed us of our freedom and our self-respect. It has turned this beautiful, bountiful planet into a prison with paper bars. How do we not see this? Could it be that we are members of a mind-control cult so pervasive as to be invisible? It certainly has all the characteristics of a cult, including myths, dogmatic unquestioning belief, and vicious punishment of heretics. There is no shame in having been brain-washed, only in consciously choosing to remain so. Let's examine the mythology, and see if it holds up.Myth #1: The economy is an efficient means of managing resources.
No, it isn't. The economy thrives on waste. Planned obsolescence is an obvious example. It is not economically profitable to make things that last. The economy demands that "goods" be produced as cheaply as possible and last a very short time so as to keep "consumers" consuming and feed the profit machine. Another example of this fallacy is "manufactured want". Goods are produced that no one really has any use for, then we waste human time and creativity on advertising to make people want them. The economy is incredibly wasteful of human energy. Most of the work that people do, doesn't need doing. "Primitive" societies that lack our labour-saving technologies, devote far less time to work that we do. It is sad to see brilliant creative people, who would love to share their gifts, working as tele-marketers and factory slaves. Myth #2: The economy is the driver of innovation and progress.
Wrong again. These things are the result of human creativity and curiosity. The economy has interfered with progress whenever it has threatened vested interests. There is no need for us to still be using fossil fuels, for example. Free energy technology exists, but is not made available because it is free. Likewise, medical advances are suppressed to protect the profits of the pharmaceutical industry. Up-to-date discoveries in the fields of physics and biology are not mentioned in grade-school science classes. This is not because they are hard to understand, but because their paradigm-shattering implications threaten vested interests. Need I go on? Another way that the economy has hurt progress is by making us stupid. The brain develops as it is used. Survival needs are taken care of by the R-complex, the reptilian brain. This is it's oldest and least evolved part. The economy, through it's insistence that everyone (except the elite) earn the right to exist, causes us to overuse this part of the brain. Scientific research has shown that a foetus whose mother experiences survival anxiety develops an enlarged R-complex and a shrunken prefrontal cortex. I suspect this is the explanation for social conditions in areas where poverty is most prevalent. In our modern technological society, we have the means to sustainably feed, house and educate everyone on this planet. The only reason we don't is because it would hurt the economy. If people didn't have to worry about surviving, who would staff the third world sweat-shops? Myth #3: Economic growth will lead to greater prosperity for all.
Um, no. Within the economy, the more scarce something is (including money), the more valuable. That is called "supply and demand". These are presented as natural forces. They're not. In order to maximise profit, both are manipulated. "Surplus" food-stuffs are dumped rather than distributed in order to keep prices high. Through advertising, wants are created (where none existed) in order to increase demand. In Vancouver, at least 15% of housing sits empty because it is "investment property" while hundreds are homeless. Low unemployment leads to inflation, so it is deliberately maintained at a level that suits the hoarders of capital. This level is called the NAIRU (non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment) by economists. This is the reason central banks raise and lower interest rates. There must be losers as well as winners so the rats will keep running, faster and faster. Also, because of the pyramidal structure of the economy, there must be a lot more losers than winners. Myth #4: The economy is the best/only way of organising society.
Not so. Society is organised through communication. If money were to disappear tomorrow, we would not suddenly forget how to speak and write. People would still be capable of organising for common purpose. Everything that wants and needs doing would still get done. People are naturally social and cooperative. Most of us want to contribute something for the benefit of others. The challenge would not be in getting things done but in finding ways to occupy ourselves once all the unnecessary labour ends. Those who are not able to be "productive" do not represent a burden to anyone but rather an opportunity for caring and generosity. "Organising", in the context of this myth, really means managing (as in slaves or livestock). It means forcing others to do what they would otherwise refuse to do.
Myth #5: Money is simply a means of facilitating exchange. It reflects intrinsic value.
I was curious about how and why money came to exist. I assumed, as do most people, that it evolved to expedite trade. When I did some research, I discovered that it was actually created for the purpose of paying tribute. It allowed the rulers to amass and store more wealth than they could in a grain-based economy. In other words, it was created to facilitate hoarding by the wealthy and powerful. This is still it's primary purpose. If money reflected intrinsic value, goods and services would be traded for those of equal value. If this were the case, there would be no such thing as "profit". Profit is the result of fraudulently or coercively trading something of lesser for something of higher value. Profit is theft. It should hardly need stating that not everything with value can be commodified. This obvious fact is increasingly sneared at or overlooked.
Myth #6: Economic activity = democracy = freedom.
This is a particularly nasty lie, as it plays on noble instincts to deliver just the opposite. The economy does not promote democracy (as officially defined, "government of the people for the people"). It concentrates power in the hands of the very few. When was the last time your government defended the interests of the people over those of the elite? Exactly. This is not the result of corruption, but the result intended from the beginning. The monetary economy was invented by the rulers to control the ruled. I have deliberately chosen not to make a distinction between capitalism and communism, since both are monetary economic systems and both are coercive and enslaving. One is secretly, and the other openly so. That is the only real difference. This false polarity has proved very useful for the controllers, since we would all prefer to believe we are free. This also allows for circumscribed debate, which never addresses the real issues.
To return to the Aztec parallel, it should be pointed out that most of those people believed that what they were doing was right and necessary. Their priests and rulers told them so. When the promised results failed to materialise, their solution was... more of the same. Some of them must have known that what they were doing was cruel and insane but they didn't see any alternative. Sound familiar? This brought about the end of their civilisation. Somebody should have said something.
There are alternatives to the monetary economy. The natives of this region (Pacific North-West) had a gift economy until it was outlawed by the European colonialists. The movie, Zeitgeist Addendum proposes a resource based economy. There are other possibilities as well. Actually, almost everyone has had the experience of a non-monetary economy. We call it "the family". What will be fundamentally required is awareness, vision, maturity and cooperation. It's going to be up to us. We will have to trust each other and ourselves. The psychopaths who are running the show don't want to change. The first thing we need to do is wake up and stop supporting the insanity. The rest might be easier that we think.

Note: This essay might seem to include excessive use of quotation marks. In many cases I am employing them to indicate abuse of language. This is one of the hall-marks of mind-control, that words and phrases are used in ways that reverse or pervert their proper meaning.

Ian Xel Lungold was indeed a remarkable researcher. And it was thanks to you, 13, that I found him so ... thank you! As a by-the-by I took a page from your book last week and made up my own tzolkin index card system, as a result of which, Water, I finally get your name. And from what I've seen of you so far, 'Offering' and 'Ascension' really do seem to express your personality, don't they?

Turns out I'm 7 Akbal ... Reflecting Night. And that seems to fit, too, and much better than any of the other signs. I've run family and friends through as well and the results are eerily accurate. The Mayans were certainly on to something.

I noticed none of this during the brief period in which I followed Dreamspell. It's just as you said, Dreamspell is a corruption. Calleman and Lungold seem to actually know that they're talking about, in stark contrast to Arguelles' self-serving word salad and other doom-mongering 'researchers' who keep muttering about 2012 without explaining what, really, of significance will happen in that year.

And now to the matter at hand: a truly, smashing fantastic article, 13! One of your best yet, the words fairly crackle off the screen. Bit of a departure from the norm, in that you spend more time shining light into the negative regions than you do pointing towards the positive however, but that's no criticism, certainly not a complaint. Merely an observation.

The dollar really is our god, and has been for a long, long time. Like all false idols it will bring destruction, wasting and death to it's worshipers but of course, they are too deluded to foresee their fate even as the final destination - wreck and ruin - comes into site.

And yet, I'm not scared. For what shall I lose, save an illusion? And I'm already disillusioned. So I lose nothing, for it was nothing to begin with, and I gain ... some truly fantastic stories, to relate to my wide-eyed grandchildren, of the Madness of the End of Days and the mad adventures by which we survived and even, in the face of the greatest challenge our species has faced in recorded history, thrived.

But for those who cling to the illusion, their lot is anxiety, fear, and terror, and it will only ratchet upwards in intensity until either they break or their world does.... I'd pity them, were it not their own fault. Instead I find myself more inclined to laugh....

Hi Psychegram, nice to see you. I appreciate your confirmations re the Tzolkin. I suppose you must have noticed the connection between your day-sign and the name of your blog "Dreamscapes & Night Terrors". I recently looked up the day-sign for another friend who is Akbal(11). She also identified strongly with the "night" translation. What I liked about Arguelles' work was his ideas about fractal time. However, he is a sloppy thinker and jumps to insupportable conclusions. As I said before, I think his use of the Tzolkin symbols for the "Dreamspell" leads to confusion and he really should have known that.Yes, this post was a departure for me. My interest in economics is a result of reading the work of Linda McQuaig. She cuts through the B.S. around this subject so brilliantly. Conrad Black, the media tycoon (presently in jail for trying to rip off people richer and more powerful that himself), said "She should be horse-whipped". A high reccomendation if there ever was one. I wrote this because I keep coming across articles on economics that propose alternatives to the status quo, then some readers always pipe up with the above, oft-repeated myths. I felt compelled to "blow them (the myths, not the people) out of the water". I published it on Evolver.net also, and it has been well-received there. I certainly feel better for getting it off my chest LOL. I agree, there is nothing to fear from the collapse of "the system". It was never worth having in the first place, except as a challenge to rise to, and grow from. It sure would be wonderful and exciting to get to the next level this time, instead of starting over. Humanity has such amazing potential. I have a feeling our space-brothers-&-sisters are waiting for us to realise it.